words of Fuller, the abbeys “dispensed mistaken charity, promiscuously entertaining some who did and many who did not desire it: yea! these abbeys did but support the poor whom they themselves had made.” With the dissolution of these abbeys these poor people were thrown back on the State, and under the Statute of Elizabeth, which lasted unimpaired till 1834 and in 1921 was still the basis of the Poor Law, a compulsory assessment was made “for the relief of the impotent and the setting of the able-bodied to work.” (See under Charity and Charities, 5.880 seq.)
The administration of the Poor Law proceeded for 230 years with variations of leniency and severity till 1785, when a period of excessive expenditure set in, which in some cases swallowed up the whole of the annual rateable value of the land and reduced the nation to the verge of bankruptcy, leaving the population in a state of complete demoralization. In 20 years from 1783 the Poor Law expenditure had more than doubled itself, and in 1817 it had reached the enormous total of £7,871,811 for a population of about 11,000,000. In 1832 a Royal Commission was appointed which conducted a thorough inquiry and collected striking evidence on the moral deterioration. It appeared from the evidence that the change made in the character and habits of the poor by once receiving public relief is quite remarkable. They are demoralized ever afterwards. “The disease is hereditary,” it was contended, “and when once a family has applied for relief they are pressed down for ever.” The receipt of relief by a man has been compared in its results to the loss of virtue in a woman. They are never the same again. The commissioners state that pauperism seems to be an engine for the purpose of disconnecting each member of the family from all others: of reducing all to the state of domesticated animals fed, lodged and provided for by the parish without mutual dependence or mutual interest.
The Commissioners showed that the bulk of the abuses and evils disclosed were the direct result of indiscriminate outdoor relief. They laid down the principles: (1) that the pauper's condition shall be less eligible than that of the independent labourer of the lowest class who has to bear the charge; (2) that the function of the State should be limited to the relief of destitution, such destitution to be tested by the willingness to enter a workhouse or institution; (3) that remedial relief as opposed to the relief of destitution should be left to voluntary charity. The main truth is that in all public relief there must be an element of deterrence and some check or test to prevent general pauperism.
On these principles the new Poor Law, the administration of which was handed over to the Commissioners, was based, and it was exercised with such efficiency that in 1871 with a population of 22,500,000 the cost was almost exactly the same as in 1817 with a population of 11,000,000; in other words the cost of pauperism per head of the population had sunk from 14s. to 7s. Between 1873 and 1883 the percentage of those in receipt of direct public assistance was slightly over 3% of the population, the lowest point reached being 2.9 in 1878 and 1879. In the meanwhile the working-classes had not only recovered their self-respect and self-reliance but had through their own organization, the trade unions, the friendly societies, the coöperative societies and the building societies, provided a complete answer to all the difficulties of the Labour problem. In these trade unions and friendly societies they themselves without help from the State had elaborated methods by which provision was made for sickness, accident and old age. Their coöperative societies provided them with the necessaries of life of excellent quality at little over cost price; their building societies provided them with the means to acquire their own houses. At the beginning of the 'nineties a complete survey of the whole problem was taken by the Royal Commission on Labour, and it appeared that the income of 542 trade unions was £1,790,000 and the membership 1,080,000. There were 29,742 friendly societies with a membership of 8,320,262 and funds of more than £26,000,000; also 1,624 coöperative societies with 1,119,000 members and £17,000,000 capital; the sale of foods amounted to £48,500,000 and the profits to £4,774,000; while the assets of the building societies (£50,700,000) brought the total capital funds traceable to the working-classes up to between £90,000,000 and £100,000,000, quite apart from their deposits in savings banks, etc., which a competent authority estimated at another £160,000,000 at the very least. So different was the position that Mr. Ludlow (the chief registrar of the friendly societies) could say in his evidence before the Commission: “Now the black spots in the country may I think almost be counted on the fingers. In former days it was very nearly black, with but few white spots.” This wonderful development of self-help embraced all skilled labour and was gradually taking hold of the unskilled, giving the English workingman a knowledge of business and a training in self-government such as the working-man in no other non-English speaking country possessed in anything like the same degree, if at all.
The serpent however was in the grass. The politicians saw capital in the working-man as a voter. In 1886 the first breach was made in the Poor Law system by the institution of municipal distress committees which withdrew the unemployed to a certain extent from the workhouse test. In 1890 the fees for elementary education were remitted, that the poor might have more wherewith to pay for the food and clothing of their children, but it was not till the beginning of the 20th century that, to use Aristotle's expression, more holes were made in the cask. In 1905 the Unemployed Workmen's Act was passed. In 1906 the Children's Meals Provision Act was passed, in 1907 the Administrative Provisions Act, in 1908 Old Age Pensions were adopted and in 1911 the system of National Health Insurance was introduced with its famous bribe of “9d. for 4d.” By 1913 it was no longer possible to form any idea of what proportion of the population was living on its exertions and what was depending on public subsidy, or what was the administrative cost. In January of that year therefore, the writer, with the support of friends on both sides of politics, began to ask for a return which would give the facts and figures. In 1919 the fourth edition of that return was published, and later information enables the following picture to be given in 1921.
In 1890 the expenditure on public assistance from rates and taxes was £25,000,000, in 1901 £40,000,000, in 1911 £68,800,000, in 1919 £172,800,000 according to a return which includes figures as old as 1916 (No. 160, 1920), and for the year ending March 31 1921 no less than £332,000,000 (including war pensions) as far as can be gathered from statements in Parliament. The beneficiaries from the last-mentioned return appear to number not fewer than 28,000,000 out of a population which cannot be put higher than 48,000,000. In other words 58% of the population in 1921 were receiving help from public funds, at a rate of about £6 11s. per head, as compared with 4.6% at a rate of 7s. per head in 1871.
With regard to the total of 28,000,000, on the one hand there is, as will be seen, a great deal of fraud and overlapping which may tend to reduce the number, but on the other hand there are a great many gaps in the figures of the return, the figures relating to the National Insurance Unemployment Act being given at 58,000—much too few for the year ending March 31 1921.
We must now say a few words as to some of the holes in the cask, and on the means, if any, of regulating the money poured in or stopping the leaks.
The principal British Acts concerned are (1) the Education Act with the Provision of Meals Acts, etc.; (2) the Old Age Pension Acts; (3) the National Health Insurance Acts; (4) the Public Health Act, (a) as to hospitals and treatment of disease, (b) as to maternity and child welfare; (5) War Pensions and Ministry of Pensions Acts; (6) Housing of the Working Class Acts; (7) Acts relating to the relief of the poor; (8) Unemployed Workmen's Act; (9) Unemployed Insurance Act. No account is here taken of the bread, coal and railway subsidies, which amounted in 1920-1 to about £87,000,000; they are omitted because they affected the whole population and were temporary.
The Education Act would not at first sight seem to fall under the heading of public assistance, but educationists take an entirely new view of their work to that of other days. “Formerly,” says an education report of the London County Council in 1910,
